There’s a comfortable complacency in Hounslow Council—and it comes from Labour’s overwhelming majority. With such dominance, scrutiny becomes performative, and arrogance thrives. Labour in Hounslow operates on the assumption that they’ll always be in power—and for 15 years, they’ve been right. Why? It’s not because there’s no opposition, despite what some commenters suggest. It’s because the boring old left-wing rhetoric: Labour good, Conservatives bad.
Local elections aren’t national elections. What matters is the quality of the people standing. And here in Hounslow, Labour’s dominance has created a machine that hides behind warm language and photo ops while wasting money, rewarding insiders, and resisting scrutiny. Their majority means they barely defend their decisions. Opposition voices are dismissed or shouted down. I should know—I’m often on the receiving end.
Recently on the ChiswickW4 forum, someone claimed the Conservative opposition has no bite. I disagree. There are only eight of us left—thanks partly to the defection of Cllr Gill, now enjoying the safety of Labour’s numbers—but we remain active, vocal, and committed to holding this bloated system to account.
We don’t have a taxpayer-funded PR machine. Labour does. We don’t pay £50,000 in public money to five councillors for make-believe titles like “cabinet assistants.” Labour does.
Look at Hounslow Matters, the council’s weekly email and glossy magazine. You’d think only Labour councillors attend events or care about the community. In eight years, I can recall just two mentions of a Conservative councillor. It’s taxpayer-funded PR for Labour, plain and simple.
A recent FOI revealed the council’s communications team now has 17 staff. PR spending rose 13% in one year—from £1.97 million in 2024 to £2.22 million in 2025—while the council raised taxes to the legal max and raided emergency reserves. We’re told government funding is tight. But somehow, there’s still money for glossy self-promotion—and no mention of Lampton Group’s £13 million losses. Funny that.
Thankfully, we have local media outlets like The Hounslow Herald, ChiswickW4, and Chiswick Calendar, who still report on local democracy. I don’t expect them to support us—but at least they let different voices be heard. That’s crucial. Truth matters.
Here’s some truth Labour won’t promote: a senior Labour councillor, Raghwinder Siddhu, was recently suspended by the Solicitors Regulation Authority after a judge found he and his partner at SZ Solicitors had created documents retrospectively and gave unreliable evidence. He resigned from his law firm just before the ruling. He also stepped down from his cabinet post—but don’t worry, the family finances were protected. His wife, Cllr Emma Siddhu, was swiftly promoted by Council Leader Rajawat to Chair of Planning—one of the most powerful roles in local government. Her qualifications? Irrelevant, it seems. Just trust the leader.
And it’s not an isolated case. Cllr Pritam Grewal has been promoted back into cabinet, while his wife, Cllr Ajmer Grewal, remains there too. Together, their household now earns nearly £69,000 in council allowances. And yet, Labour still trades on the myth of being the party of fairness.
They raise your taxes, cut services, increase their own allowances, and rely on a PR machine to keep you distracted. Often, it works. But that doesn’t mean we should stay silent.
This is why your vote at local elections matters. When one party has unchecked power, it stops listening. The public becomes an afterthought. Labour relies on you not noticing—or caring. Like the proverbial frog in hot water, by the time you realise what’s happening, it might be too late.
Change will come only when we stop voting by habit and start paying attention to how councillors actually behave. Judge us by our actions, not our party labels. That will tell you the real story.
